By contrast, Yukon’s only operating hard rock mine, Capstone Mining’s Minto Mine, produced 39,000 fine ounces of gold in 2016 as a by-product of its copper production, or nearly 65% of the entire placer industry’s output.

What would modernizing the royalty to reflect the current gold price accomplish?

Gold is currently trading at roughly $1610 CDN, so if we multiply that by 72.6% to account for smelting loss and gold fineness (inequitable or not), we arrive at $1168.86 as a “base rate” per raw (crude) ounce.

Now 2.5% of $1168.86 is $29.22 per ounce and that times the 2016 production of 65,646 ounces is $1,918,275.

Under $2 million from an 80-fold increase in the royalty rate.

An amount of money your Yukon government will burn through in less than 24 hours.

Let’s bring this down to a personal level.

On top of the more than $50,000 I currently pay annually in business, payroll and personal tax, as well as all the monies my operation contributes towards fuel, groceries and other supplies to the local economy, I typically produce enough placer gold to be responsible for approximately $20,000 of that updated royalty amount.

$20,000 is what it costs to put one of my daughters through a year of university.

What impact does $20,000 of one youth and future taxpayer’s education have on a brief moment of the current government’s operations, yet alone its projected deficit for 2018/19 of nearly $50 Million?

As I said at the outset, this current round of discussions was sparked largely by ignorance of the operational realities of placer mining, and has totally overlooked its valuable contributions.

For the public, who unless they are directly involved as a supplier to our industry, that is forgivable.

But to the committee who is charged by our public government to formulate these recommendations I can offer no such understanding.

It is absolutely incumbent upon you to understand those whom you wish to tax.

I can only assume you possess one or both of the other two unappealing traits mentioned at the outset and for that I say shame on you…all of you.